Posted on 07/25/2022 4:08:16 AM PDT by george76
Los Angeles Fire Department has 115 employees who live outside the state of California, including one who lives in Alaska and five more who live on the East Coast.
With a few firefighters making more than $500,000 a year and a median home listing of $1 million in the city, whether Los Angeles should have a residency requirement is being discussed internally, according to a report and ongoing city council discussions.
About 15% of the firefighters live within the city limits, a figure that prompted fire officials to consider requiring firefighters to live closer to the area they protect in case of a major disaster.
The fire department has been working with the City Council to attract more city residents, women and minorities to the department. The fire department provided the council with several ways to boost those numbers.
The City Council passed a motion late last year for the police and fire departments to establish an incentive program to recruit more city residents.
"The majority of police officers and firefighters are not residents of the City of Los Angeles, which means other jurisdictions benefit from their spending on property tax, sales tax and other revenues," according to a city council motion. "Longer commutes from other cities also create traffic congestion and increase air pollution. Finally and most importantly, the communities that officers and firefighters serve are often not the ones that they themselves belong to, which can create a natural disconnect between public servants and constituents."
That so many firefighters live outside the city creates problems with scheduling and impacts overtime. It's common for the city's firefighters to make $200,000 or more in overtime in a year. There were 86 employees in the fire department who made $400,000 or more in 2021. The city paid $244.9 million in overtime in 2021.
About 85% of Los Angeles firefighters live outside the city. The report found that of the 3,348 members of the department, 1,058 lived outside the city but within Los Angeles County. Another 1,247 firefighters lived in the adjacent counties of Orange, Ventura, Kern and San Bernardino. A further 412 lived in other counties in Southern California.
Some lived even further away. Seventeen lived in Central and Northern California and 115 lived in other states. While many of those 115 lived in either Utah, Arizona and Idaho, one firefighter lived in Florida. Another lived in Alaska.
The report said the city had the legal right to enforce a residency requirement. Some other large U.S. cities, such as Chicago, require firefighters to live within city limits before they can be hired.
the city had the legal right to enforce a residency requirement.
Yes that well really help solve the recruitment problem.
/S/
I do not believe they can legally impose retroactive residency requirements.
Another idea: pass a law that requires that no home be valued over $100K. /s
The Firefighters In San Fransisco I knew 15 years ago “lived in Oregon” on paper so they could register their cars there without CARB requirements.
They knew they wouldn’t be able to live in SF if they retired or couldn’t work, so they had an escape plan...and if The Big One hit....
Courts found that residency requirements were illegal because they prevented minorities from joining police and fire departments of towns they didn't live in.
Residency requirements are legal based on whims, not actual law.
What if he hits traffic on the way to the fire?
Seems to me you would want people who are not emotionally invested in such positions so they are making decisions based on logic instead of “OMG the sky is falling on my neighborhood!” type of thinking.
“I do not believe they can legally impose retroactive residency requirements.”
Governments can make any laws they want. To change them, you have to take them to court. It takes hundreds of dollars per hour to operate the legal system and the average person simply can’t afford it, so whatever “unjust” law is on the books can stay there until Hell freezes.
I suspect when they say “out of state” they mean Mexico. As I just mentioned in another post, many of the Mexicans I met in Mexico had full time jobs in California, but their family and homes were in Mexico. Thus, they earn the California wage rates but live the life of kings in the Mexican economy. It’s nice if you can do it.
Alaska and the east coast makes for an interesting commute.
Firefighters are a bit unique. They live at the station while on duty. Smart to live somewhere else and collect the big bucks.
Well, I guess you could carve out a little spot under a bridge....maybe
I worked for a community college and you we’re required not to live more than 40 miles away.
I worked for a community college and you we’re required not to live more than 40 miles away.
How does a Cauliphonya “firefighter” fight fires in Cauliphonya from Alaska? Must be a Cauliphonya thing.
NYC residency requirements for FDNY and NYPD are actually quite liberal in the old school sense - members of those departments can live in Nassau, Suffolk, Westchester, Rockland, Orange and Putnam Counties. Nevertheless, there are cases of cops and firemen living across state lines in NJ including a former cop turned mayor who was living in Fort Lee, NJ until recently l ;).
What, like a moose in the road?
That is quiet a bit different than working in LA where the closest state border is a 4 hour drive away to NV or AZ.
The distance that some of these LA firefighters live away would be like being a firefighter in Staten Island and living in NH or VA.
I would think that most of these LA firefighters are living in other states for tax/quality of life reasons. They can make a lot more money being on the LA fire department than they can in Boise.
One solution related to housing costs, would be for the fire department to own housing, and rent that housing to employees at a discounted rate, so they can afford to live in L.A.
I don’t know if there are tax implications with that, in that, discouted rent would be like additional income. But if this problem is that severe, LA needs to do something like this, if they want to ensure their firemen actually live in LA when off the clock.
Crossing the border for work has been going on for 60+ years in California/Mexico.
For example, back in the 1950’s my father in law(now 85) worked in San Diego. He went to San Diego state and worked at the General Dynamics/Lockeed Martin aircraft factory assembling Corvair jets. He lived across the border in Tijuana. He was a young gringo from NH. Back in the day, it was very safe to live there. It was also cheaper to live in Tijuana. He lived there for five years. By the time he moved back to NH he was fluent in Spanish.
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